Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Once again, real life has intruded on my blogging life. This seems to be happening more and more. And I don't want this site to start sucking as a result. Thus, I need to do some serious thinking here about the future of the MZone.

My sincere apologies for the spotty blogging of late and thanks for understanding.

63 comments:

Yost - it's the off-season, I for one don't expect mind-blowing articles every day and there really isn;t that much CFB related info out there right now. It's cool.

In the meantime, maybe you could have some guest commentators. They could send you articles and you could review them to see if they'll work. After a while you'll be able to trust certain guest commentators enough that you wouldn;t need to review their stuff and give them the password so that they could post in your absence.

Or tell that damn Benny to get off his ass and start earning his keep. I had a roommate who's Dad told him one summer in college when he was staying at home, "Son, if you're staying in my house for more than a week, you're either paying me, working for me, or f$%#ing me, and frankly you're not that good looking, so let's get some work done around here." Maybe you need to have "The Talk" with Benny.

Sorry you didn't win any of the blogger awards. Believe me, a lot of the reasons I like it here are for things they don't have awards for. I really thought you had the "best community" award in the bag though.

aside from a couple weeks of spring practice, there isn't much from signing day to the start of fall practice anyway. post a "talk amongst yourselves" comment once in awhile, and leave things on idle until the season starts.

and BTW, has there been a coach since Barry Switzer that has had so much trouble understanding the NCAA rules as sweaterboy???

From the article: "The only thing clear is that no one seems clear on exactly what the rules allow."

After reading the article it is apparent that even the Athletic Depts. charged with knowing the rules are flummoxed.

"But because of concerns that such events might violate murky NCAA rules, this decades-old tradition of inviting college coaches to school fundraisers might soon come to an end."

If you read the article without your teeth set on edge (sour grapes) it all makes perfect sense. The bottom line being the NCAA needs to clean up and streamline its murky rule book. No one (actually moving)can seem to pass through the minefield unscathed.

However, if your coaches or Athletic Depts. are lazy or operate out of fear of even appearing *shudder* shady, I suppose your program could stay under the radar.

My favorite statement: "'I sincerely believe he (Tressel) has a mission to help people,' Crabtree said."

That has always been my opinion. Sometimes it comes back to bite you, but I'll take that approach to college athletics any day.

I bought that round because this was too easy. The next one is on you and don't be cheap.

Yost baby, put it out there to this "community" what you need. I think if you need some assistance from a few people to keep content coming and up, there are people who are glad to help.

That said, I also agree 100% with everyone, it is the off season, put up a "talk amongst yourselves thread" every few days and we will have a ball.

I AM saying, please don't let this die, coz we love it here and this blog at the VERY least should have won for best community. Seriously. Joshua and T9 were great supports to me during the death of my brother. Corey tutored me.....it doesn't get better than the Mzone crowd.....so.....please don't let closing this be an option. Put it out there, for people to help you.

wt,sure- assume he is the purest of souls, the most committed to compliance w/ ncaa rules coach ever to walk the face of the planet. in his spare time he's working on a cure for cancer, too. he'll get on that just as soon as he finishes that "world peace" project he's got going on in the basement. mother teresa sits in heaven, wishing she had been as good as he is.

doesn't matter. "bad luck" follows him around like his shadow.

name any current coach who has as many articles written about him & ncaa problems as sweaterboy does since coming to tosu? airplane trips to the final four, players "working" at summer camps, cell phone contracts ("can you hear me now? ..."), clarett, whatever. it's a constant.

every 6 to 18 months he's in the news. he or one of his top players is explaining, apologizing, or otherwise side stepping an ncaa "issue" of some sort contiuously. and this article proves that point. he can't even go to a high school pot luck w/ out creating some sort of ncaa stir. it's something akin to a "midas" touch. reversed.

if you think he's blameless in all of it? that's fine w/ me. but you got to admit that the volume is there, his fault or not.

Do they monitor reading comp. at Michigan? The article proves the point that no matter what one does, one can't help but be in violation of some NCAA rule if one is active in the community. Everyone involved kept tweaking the event to fit some real or mythical NCAA infraction. The NCAA is the freaking IRS on steroids.

"Bad Luck?" No. It's the fall-out from being active in the community and in the lives of players. I don’t think he gives a crap.

Granted, he doesn't seem to care about all the red tape and lives with one foot on the line. Good. I like that. Maybe his style will cause the NCAA to reign in some of their stupid rules.

I have no opinion on Tressel's purity. How would you even evaluate that? He wears a sweatervest. He must be 99% pure.

Barry Switzer, Barry Switzer...? Didn't he win a lot at Oklahoma? If I remember correctly, Nebraska and Texas were always whining about his tactics.

Who told you about the cancer cure? That was supposed to be top secret. We have to kill you now. Well, after another round and you pay the bar tab.

For starters, I'm with Catie and T9, OOC ect ect.Been home sick for two days and boredome drove me to look for some song lyrics. I found instead an angel for rent! To heck with the Golf chick.http://www.sexysavannahvip.com/vip-escort-welcome/

There is nothing wrong with missing a few days here or there during the off-season.

You do great work...don't let having a productive and busy life make you think of stepping back from blogging. We bloggers are under no obligation to write each day - there is only an obligation to ourselves to do great work when work is done.

Yost, take the spring off. Take the summer off. We want you back healthy for football season! Seriously, this blog is one of the best. It doesn't suck, nor will it ever suck. The posts are great and the community is one of the best.

Take a break, get that real life taken care of. It's more important. We'll be here. Heck, you could just post Monday hello! then Tuesday Hello! then Wednesday Hello! and so on for weeks. We'll just yack until you're ready!

You owe us nothing. We owe you for giving us a place to chat about our favorite team and think we are relevant!

Sru,I mean this with all the love I can possibly muster and with no disrespect, but you're an idiot. I don't know what makes you dumb man, but it really, reallllllllyy works. Fisher had nothing to do with what happened here. I mean seriously man- if you pay someone to tutor you on making increasingly invalid comments then they deserve a raise.

j/k. But if you'd like to get into basketball coaches perhaps we could discuss Jim O'Brien? You know him right- the coach who was actually fond to be at fault in their scandal.

In unrelated news, Erin Burnett, host of CNBC's Street Signs, is on Conan tonight. This is better than skinemax.

Possible topics of discussion for Wed! (AKA Things you can learn while playing poker until 3 am when you're supposed to be in the gym at 6:30 am......)

A. Katarina Witt retired. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long, lonnnnng time.

B. Britney might be pregnant again. Ok seriously, has there been more of a train-wreck celebrity in the last ten years?

C. And sadly, Patrick Swayze has cancer and like 5 months to live. No man, not Swayze! Red Dawn. Roadhouse. Point Break. And I guess you gotta put in Dirty Dancing, right? The man was/is a badass. What a shame.

Hey Dezz, would I have to be in bold the entire time? That's a lot of pressure.

Sru, you are correct, Fisher provided complimentary tickets to Martin. 26 over the course of 3 or four years I believe, so I'll give you that, but to say Fisher gave Switzer a run for his money is ludicrous. Now if O'Brien made that recruit do sprints to earn the $6,000 he paid him than I guess we could say he literally ran for his money.

I heard that Fisher was very well liked, even though he turned a blind eye to Ed Martin's shenanigans. Is this true?

Even so, I am still very disappointed in Fisher for all this. He did nothing for years yet he was not implicated for anything. IMO, he is responsible for making sure that his team is not falling out of line.

Interestingly though, SI had a slideshow of the 25 biggest scandals in sports, and the Fab Five was not mentioned at all (just like in the Michigan record books!). And this was after a Spartan fan told me that what UM did was so horrendous that it was worse than SMU and MSU during the 90s and that UM should have been given the death penalty. He went on to say that the NCAA was too afraid to do so b/c Michigan has a lot power as a major program and that the NCAA would lose too much money if Michigan athletics went belly up. Yes, he said this.

This is a great Blog!! I come here every day for my daily dose of humor either at the expense of the osu organization or um, when that rarely happens. The b-ball coach going off was a bit embarrassing. Wow. Anyone say Prozac?Anyhow, I love everyones comments and the banter back and forth. This site is great all year and during off season we'll all just find stuff to chat about, but please don't end it!!! Side note, doesn't that golfer feel unbalanced with all the weight in the front?!:) Thanks for a great Blog!!!

And that is partly why I have such little respect for MSU. OSU just hates us but, for the most part, they won't make excuses for their hate or try to rationalize it. The Buckeyes will just throw bottles at UM fans and raid our message boards. (Fine, they have been able to beat us, too.) Yeah, we're arrogant blah blah blah, but OSU's hate is the most pure.

http://www.enlightenedspartan.com/enemies/michigan.htm

One of my favorites is when MSU fans claim to own UM in basketball, when the series is pretty much even and we are 2-3 against them in the last 3 years.

You guys fighting over who;s more slimy are funny. Don't you just see that a girl, Kristy at 7:12 just mentioned another girls big boobs, and you missed it! Duh... it means a girl... was looking at another girl's chest... in amazement!

Kristy, as an engineer, I can explain what puzzles you. The golfer chick's perfectly arched reptilian back fully supports the inviting, cantilevered bosom through the use of that wonderfully splendid counterweight referred to by lonely engineers with pregnant off-limits wives as the booty.

...So I'll retract my "Fisher had nothing to do with what happened here" statement. The rest of the stuff I stand by. The least you could do is buy that tutor health insurance, or maybe you could have Henton pick up a date for him/her.

....Or Troy Smith could get a booster to loan her $500, and if that money gets stolen maybe AJ Hawk could help her file a police report about stolen cash. Hell, perhaps you could have a running back drive her to the police station in a "loaner" vehicle. But then you'd have to throw him under the bus if he got pulled over for a violation on the way there, right?

Look, feel free to call the kettle black on this one, but only if the Pot and the Kettle are Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenager in Twins. Acting holier than thou is our territory- you better come hard and fast if you're thnking about invading it.

"He went on to say that the NCAA was too afraid to do so b/c Michigan has a lot power as a major program and that the NCAA would lose too much money if Michigan athletics went belly up. Yes, he said this."

Well, now, I don't know if the above is true, but if it is it would explain how Tressel escapes punishment. Like most things --follow the money. We're all in the same boat it seems: pots, kettles, etc.

f'n blue,

Thanks for the compliment: "...but OSU's hate is the most pure." It's nice to win something every now and then.

OOC,

Excellent description of yon golferette. However, you need to strike a compromise with the wife before you get in serious trouble.

Again, I do not know the veracity of the following, but for chain-pulling it is interesting enough to re-paste it. Especially the parenthetical portion:

"Interestingly though, SI had a slideshow of the 25 biggest scandals in sports, and the Fab Five was not mentioned at all (just like in the Michigan record books!)."

SiC, I'm trying to pin-point the source of your incessant bitterness. Is it living in Ohio that has you bunched up? Could it be the November winning streak? Please tell me it's not tOSU spouse. That would be totally unfair. Maybe a combination of the above?

Compadre, if I was you, I would wait for the NCAA to ambush Tressel and company and then you will have your day. You need to wait in a relaxed state (AZ maybe) free from the complications of stress.

If, however, it is found that tOSU is too big a cash cow for the NCAA to go after, we both can enjoy the fact that our programs are untouchable. The playing field will be level...

except for the fact that Tressel is better at working the system than your guys.

Great article. I usually don't trust the NY times, but since you vouched for them, I read it.

I think the writer did a great job showing the different sides to Tressel. Loved the article.

Speaking of amusement, this was funny:

In Ann Arbor, Tressel has become a convenient foil, said Andrei Markovits, a professor of politics and German studies at Michigan. Ohio State is viewed as everything that Michigan purports not to be, Markovits said, noting that Wolverine supporters rejoice in Ohio State’s highly publicized troubles and convince themselves that Carr operates a cleaner, more honorable program.

The thinking at Michigan, Markovits said, is, “They may be better than us, but Tressel is basically a weasel and an opportunist and probably runs dirty things, and we are saints.” At some point, though, Markovits said, this holier-than-thou attitude becomes sour grapes, because “they have won and we haven’t; that ultimately hurts.”

SiC, I'll stick with my original premise: No denials. Tressel is just better at working the system than his rivals are. And that also is part of the game known as College Football. More power to him.

the article is (sports aside) a good example of what the times does best- report other peoples news.

none of the information is actually original - they didn't break a story here. what they did was take all the different stories and present them in a thoughtful, reflective format. coupled w/ good writing and some solid analysis (or leading questions) they present ideas and discuss what it all means.

the times (IMO) has never been great at discovering news (ala woodward, bernstien, & the post) but analyzing and discussing news instead.

my point from that would be that yes, tosu fans see it one way. however, it's not just M fans who see it the other.

i'd close w/ "agree to disagree" but the election buzz in ohio thru super tuesday 2 has been so intense, i cant stand the thought of politics right now (and about that, i AM bitter).

I stand by my assertion that O'Brien was worse. And you two are cute. It's endearing. Kinda like an old married couple. Only with out all the knitting and weird old people smell. Or at least I hope without all the knitting. I mean, I can handle weird old people smell, but people who knit, man, they just creep me the fuck out.

Yeah, lol. I think 'tis I who owe you something. I swear it's coming. Eventually. Like around 2028 or so. I swear I've been so forgetful lately you'd think it was me with the old people smell. so yeah creepy knitting guy, I'll take it in maize and blue.

Dude SIC, I don't know how you do it. I'd like to think I could but it'd end up in at least one big blowout a year for sure. But then again maybe I'd have to pick fights just for the makeup sex. On second thought that could be rather convenient.

Blue,Yeah, I saw that Esquire. The best thing about her- she's smart as all crazy hell. She studied french and russian literature (!!!) at Oxford. Not to be creepy stalker guy, it's just nice to know that beautiful intelligent women are out there, because intelligent women are just plain sexy. When they look like that it's icing on the cake. Plus she's a brunette, which is easily the top on my list of hair colors I prefer. the list goes 1) Brunette 2) Redhead or Blonde 3) everything else. Just in case anyone's keeping score.

I agree Whets, that was meant to be funny more than anything. But if it were to happen this is how I see it going down.

At the 5th annual Mzone tailgate I meet a young lady. She's funny, kind hearted, intelligent and wickedly sarcastic. She woos me with her uncommon knowledge of stocks and bonds. Unfortunately she is a Buckeye fan, but I decide to overlook this obvious character flaw and after a whirlwind courtship we are married in an exquisite ceremony which did NOT take place at White Castle. (sadly it was booked, not everything can be perfect).

A year later Michigan beats tOSU in a huge blowout (I know, this is about as likely as the scenario where I'm getting laid on a regular basis, but bear with me).As this is the end of a 10 year losing streak I'm extremely giddy. I greet The Wife with a cheery "Go Blue" every morning for the next 312 days. I regularly send her flowers, the card reading "I love you, Go Blue." I buy her twin puppies, cute little tikes...and promptly name them "Brady" and "Desmond". On vacation in the Carribbean I hire a sky writer to profess my love for her, and punctuate it with a hearty "P.S. Go Blue!" I buy her a large house. Paint it Maize and Blue. In Ann Arbor. On day 313, during our anniversary party, she shoots me. In the back. The Sweatervest, acting as her attorney, gets her exonerated on a technicality. Even though it happened in plain view of about 745 people.

So you see, this sad story proves four things. First, if I found true love I would pursue it no matter what. Secondly, The Sweatervest will never get busted, even though he consumes the souls of young kittens. Third, it takes exactly 163 licks to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop. And lastly, I have yet to find that true love, the kind which can have dogs and cats living together, but I can hope. Please pray for me.

You'll be happy to know that the story has a happy ending. The wife and I, we make up. I see that perhaps I pushed it a bit too far, and that I cannot live without her. As I am now a quadriplegic she spends her days feeding me ice chips, and dresses me daily in Scarlet and Grey.

Funny when you said that about loving the wife more than hating tOSU b/c I think anyone who'd let something as asinine as football stand in the way of happiness would be a true dolt. I happen to come from a family of extremely wonderful relationships all the way around, and at the risk of sounding like a big softy I'm extremely blessed in that regard.

Does lead to some lonely Fridays posting on the Mzone while playing poker and waiting for Mrs. right to show up, but I'm keeping the faith that she'll show up eventually. even if she does turn out to be a Buckeye.

(And yes, I'm fully aware I'm not going to meet her doing those things- that's what running 5ks and such are for. gotta hang out where my type of woman does.)

Glad I could provide a laugh or two, being such a serious guy, all doom and gloom and gravity just wears on me sometimes. *grin*

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